Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Scene I (Part 3 & 4)

Episode Structure Analysis:  Opera Van Java: “Kresna Gugah” (“Kresna Awakes”)

Original Broadcast Date: 20/5/10

Duration:  74min 11s

Cast:

Dalang  – Parto Patrio

Baladewa – Sule

Adipati Karna – Eko DJ

Banowati – Asty Ananta

Bagong – Azis Gagap

Arjuna  – Andre Taulany

Satyaki – Nunung

Kresna – Shreeraj

	YouTube Part #	Time Code:	Scene type	Action #	Action Description
	SCENE I Setting: A garden sanctuary within Lord Kresna’s realm of Dwaraswati
SCENE I	3	00:29	Narration	7.	Dalang’s Narration: Repeats introductory explanation of Kresna’s intention to meditate in order to discover the outcome of the impending Baratayuda war.
	3	00:49	‘Ton Alus	8.	Enter: Kresna and Satyaki.
	3	01:04	‘Ton Alus	9.	Slapstick gag involving the actor playing Kresna sitting on a foam “rock” that collapses under his weight.
	3	01:34	‘Ton Alus	10.	Kresna takes up a meditative position. Satyaki stands guard, watching over him.
	3	01:51	‘Ton Alus	11.	Enter: Adipati Karna
	3	02:09	‘Ton Alus	12.	Miscasting Gag: Dalang Parto interrogates the comedienne Nunung on her decision to wear high-heels while playing the role of Satyaki,  a fierce warrior.
	3	02:37	‘Ton Alus	13.	Karna informs Satyaki that he is there to wake-up Kresna. Satyaki forbids him to do so.
	3	03:13	Alas Perang	14.	Gara-gara between Satyaki and Karna
	3	05:00	‘Ton Alus	15.	Enter: Arjuna and Bagong
	3	05:29	‘Ton Alus	16.	Gag: “Eh, toprak, ya?”
	4	00:13	‘Ton Alus	17.	Arjuna intervenes and warns Karna not to disturb Kresna’s meditation.
	4	00:45	Alas Perang	18.	Gara-gara between Arjuna and Karna
	4	03:33	Alas Perang	19.	Enter: Bajing Ireng (character from 1980s martial arts television series).
	4	04:19	Alas Perang	20.	Gara-gara between Bajing Ireng and Satyaki
	4	04:52	Narration	21.	Dalang’s Narration: Karna flees to report events to Lord Baladewa in the kingdom of Mandura.
	4	05:06	Commercial break	22.	Musical Outro:

 

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 3

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 4

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Scene IV (Part 9, 10 & 11)

Episode Structure Analysis:  Opera Van Java: “Kresna Gugah” (“Kresna Awakes”)

Original Broadcast Date: 20/5/10

Duration:  74min 11s

Cast:

Dalang  – Parto Patrio

Baladewa – Sule

Adipati Karna – Eko DJ

Banowati – Asty Ananta

Bagong – Azis Gagap

Arjuna  – Andre Taulany

Satyaki – Nunung

Kresna – Shreeraj

	SCENE IV Setting: Garden sanctuary within Lord Kresna’s realm of Dwaraswati On stage: Kresna remains in his meditative position with Satyaki standing guard.
	9	00:02	Commercial Break	61.	Musical Intro:
SCENE IV	9	00:36	Narration	62.	Dalang’s narration: Meanwhile back in Dwaraswati, Kresna has still not awoken from his meditation. The Pandawa remain on guard in order to prevent the Korawa from disturbing him.
	9	01:09	‘Ton Gagah	63.	Enter: the actor playing Bagong enters stage right towing an older man in army uniform behind him. The older man is an veteran of Indonesia’s war of independence, a regular viewer of Opera Van Java, who has been brought on the show as a guest to mark the occasion of Hari Kebangkitan Nasional  (National Awakening Day).
	9	01:13	Dalan Gecul	64.	Actors playing Bagong and Satyaki interview and clown around with guest army veteran.
	9	03:02	Dalan Gecul	65.	Enter: Actor formerly playing Baladewa now dressed as an army veteran.
	9	03:38	Dalan Gecul	66.	Actor dressed as veteran improvises a scene in which he nostalgically reminisces about “his experiences” with the guest veteran during Indonesia’s war of independence. The scene culminates in the actor singing a children’s nursery rhyme about ants while the guest war veteran gyrates along to the music.
	9	05:43	Dalan Gecul	67.	Actor dressed as veteran and guest war veteran exit stage left.
	9	06:01	‘Ton Gagah	68.	Bagong and Satyaki discuss the importance of ensuring that Kresna remains undisturbed by the Korawa.
	9	06:21	Narration	69.	Dalang’s narration: Karna and Baladewa arrive looking for Arjuna…
	9	06:36	‘Ton Gagah	70.	Enter: Karna and Baladewa
	9	07:06	‘Ton Gagah	71.	Baladewa informs Satyaki that he is here to challenge Karna to war.
	9	08:42	‘Ton Gagah	72.	Satyaki informs Baladewa that if he wishes to meet Arjuna in battle he must first fight him (her).
	9	08:54	Alas Perang	73.	The gamelan begins playing the quick tempo music that indicates the imminence of a gara-gara between Baladewa and Satyaki.
	9	08:56	Alas Perang	74.	Prop-improvisation: The actor playing Baladewa picks up a near-by prop – a painted hobby-horse of the sort used in the Javanese trance-ritual dance kuda lumping – and instead of initiating the gara-gara begins improvising a kuda lumping– like dance. The actor playing Bagong grabs another near-by prop that turns out to be a large model goldfish that he proceeds to “ride” like a horse. The routine is brought to an abrupt halt by the actor playing Baladewa who questions the cultural authenticity of his fellow actor’s decision to “ride” a fish in a kuda lumping dance.
	9	09:36	Alas Perang	75.	Baladewa challenges Satyaki to a gara-gara.
	9	09:38	Alas Perang	76.	Slapstick routine: The actor playing Baladewa attempts to remove his hat in preparation for combat mimes an inability to do so. The actor playing Karna joins in the mime, attempting to remove the hat which appears to be “stuck” on Baladewa’s head. There is much pulling and shoving until the hat “comes unstuck” sending the actor playing Karna tumbling into the foam props stage right.
	9	09:59	Commercial break	77.	Musical Outro:
	10	00:02	Commercial break	78.	Musical Intro:
	10	01:08	Alas Perang	79.	Gara-gara between Baladewa and Satyaki. The fight scene turns in to a “fort war” between the two groups of actors involving numerous props including a foam “cannon” and a rifle.
	10	02:32	Alas Perang	80.	Enter: Arjuna
	10	02:37	‘Ton Gagah	81.	Arjuna commands the warring parties to cease fighting and demands an explanation as to what they are fighting over.
	10	02:54	‘Ton Gagah	82.	Baladewa exlplains that he has come to challenge Arjuna to war on account of Arjuna’s callous treatment of Banowati.
	10	03:16	Alas Perang	83.	Baladewa challenges Arjuna to a gara-gara.  Gara-gara between Baladewa and Arjuna ensues.
	10	04:12	Commercial break	84.	Musical Outro: “Begawan Solo”
	11	00:03	Commercial break	85.	Musical Intro:
	11	00:43	Alas Perang	86.	Gara-gara between Arjuna and Baladewa continues until the actor playing Baladewa exerts an ilmu (magic power) of such force that he knocks himself out.
	11	01:11	Narration	87.	Dalang’s narration: Hearing the sounds of Arjuna and Baldewa’s combat, Kresna suddenly awakens enraged that someone should have disturbed his slumber.
	11	01:21	‘Ton Gagah	88.	Kresna “awakes” and stalks to the centre of the stage. The mood is suddenly lightened as the orchestra strikes up the theme song to the well-know Bollywood fillm “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”.  The entire cast breaks into song and dance to the tune.
	11	02:19	‘Ton Gagah	89.	Kresna challenges the assembled warriors, asking who among the is brave enough to fight him.
	11	02:22	‘Ton Gagah	90.	Baladewa explains to Kresna that he is brave enough but that he is Kresna’s brother and therefore will not fight him.  Moreover, he adds, it wasn’t he who disturbed Kresna’s mediation but Bagong.
	11	02:58	‘Ton Gagah	91.	The burly actor playing Kresna turns on the diminutive actor playing Bagong and a humours gara-gara ensues between the two culminating with the small actor playing Bagong piggy-backing the large actor playing Kresna across the length of the stage.  The actors playing Karna and Baladewa follow suit stumbling across the stage and ultimately crashing into the backdrop up stage left. The action is interrupted by the dalang’s narration…
	11	03:19	Narration	92.	Dalang’s narration: Awakened from his meditation, it is Kresna who knows how this story ends…so it is up to him to explain how the Baratayuda war concludes…
	11	03:28	‘Ton Gagah	93.	The entire cast of actors exit stage left leaving only the actor playing Kresna standing somewhat confusedly in the centre of the stage.
	11	03:35	‘Ton Gagah	94.	Put on the spot and clearly unsure of how to end the show, the actor playing Kresna simply says “Akhirnya…Krensna pun….menang! (“Eventually….Kresna…wins!)
	11	03:45	‘Ton Gagah	95.	The actor playing Kresna closes the show with OVJ’s well-know catchphrase “Di sana gunung, di sini gunung. Di tengah-tengahnya pulau Jawa. Wayangnya bingung. Dalangnya lebih bingung. Yang penting bias ketawa. Tetap di Opera Van Java…Iyoiiiii!!!” (Mountains here, mountains there. In the middle, the island of Java. The wayang puppets are confused. The dalang is even more confused. (But ) what’s in important is we have a laugh. Stay tuned to Opera Van Java…iyoiiii!!)
	11	04:05	End Credits	95.	End credits roll while musical outro plays.
	11	05:16	Finish	96.	Show ends.

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 9

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 10

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 11

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Scene III (Part 7 & 8)

Episode Structure Analysis:  Opera Van Java: “Kresna Gugah” (“Kresna Awakes”)

Original Broadcast Date: 20/5/10

Duration:  74min 11s

Cast:

Dalang  – Parto Patrio

Baladewa – Sule

Adipati Karna – Eko DJ

Banowati – Asty Ananta

Bagong – Azis Gagap

Arjuna  – Andre Taulany

Satyaki – Nunung

Kresna – Shreeraj

	SCENE III Setting: Forest scene but somewhat incongruously set up as a village bensin or petrol stand complete with petrol pumps and a Yamaha motorcycle. A thatched petrol kiosk is bedecked with Yamaha logos and bunting.
SCENE III	7	00:02	Commercial Break	42.	Musical Intro:
	7.	00:36	Narration	43.	Dalang’s narration: Arjuna is puzzled by Kresna’s prolonged meditation and wonders about its purpose. Bagong, his clown-servant, reminds him though of Kresna’s purpose.
	7.	01:04	Dalan Gecul	44.	The actors playing Arjuna and Bagong improvise a scene involving the actor playing Bagong purchasing bensin (petrol) from the actor playing Arjuna. The routine centre’s on a humorous notion of purchasing petrol “by the kilo” rather than according to the usual litre measure of volume.
	7.	05:43	Adegan Taman	45.	Arjuna expresses his confusion as to why Kresna is taking so long with his meditation.Bagong explains that Kresna is mediating in order to discover the outcome of the impending Baratayuda war.
	7.	06:28	Adegan Taman	46.	Enter: Banowati
	7.	06:30	Narration	47.	Dalang’s narration: Banowati’s purpose is to spy on Arjuna but loe-and-behold, she actually falls in love with Arjuna.
	7.	06:44	Adegan Taman	48.	At the dalang’s instruction the actors playing Banowati and Arjuna engage in a pantun competition the underlying premise of which is Banowati’s attempts to seduce Arjuna and Arjuna’s repeated rebuffing of Banowati’s advances.
	8	01:02	Adegan Taman	49.	Pantun competition between the actors playing Banowati and Arjuna turns into a competition whereby the actors trade songs with opening lines relevant to the conversation at hand.
	8	02:22	Adegan Taman	50.	Arjuna explains to Banowati that he cannot be her lover as she is married to Dursasana, King of the Korawas.
	8	02:52	Narration	51.	Dalang’s narration: And so Arjuna rejects Banowati’s advances and leaves her weeping, broken-hearted in the forest.
	8	03:15	Adegan Taman	52.	Actors on stage engage in a series of pratfalls destroying many of the foam props – including the prop petrol pumps – in the process.
	8	04:32	Adegan Taman	53.	Exit: Arjuna and Bagong.
	8	04:44	Adegan Taman	54.	Enter: Karna
	8	04:59	Adegan Taman	55.	Re-enter: BagongThe actor playing Bagong sheepishly admits that he wasn’t supposed to leave the stage yet.
	8	05:10	Adegan Taman	56.	Karna inquires as to why Banowati is weeping.
	8	05:30	Narration	57.	Dalang’s Narration:  Karna listen’s to Banowati’s account of her rejection by Arjuna and declares that war between himself and Arjuna is inevitable.
	8	05:40	Adegan Taman	58.	Karna instructs Bagong to return to the Pandawa to communicate his challenge to war.
	8	06:00	Narration	59.	Dalang’s narration:  And so the Korawa declare war on the Pandawa…
	8	06:17	Commercial Break	60.	Musical Outro:

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 7

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 8

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Scene IV

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Scene II (Part 5 & 6)

Episode Structure Analysis:  Opera Van Java: “Kresna Gugah” (“Kresna Awakes”)

Original Broadcast Date: 20/5/10

Duration:  74min 11s

Cast:

Dalang  – Parto Patrio

Baladewa – Sule

Adipati Karna – Eko DJ

Banowati – Asty Ananta

Bagong – Azis Gagap

Arjuna  – Andre Taulany

Satyaki – Nunung

Kresna – Shreeraj

	YouTube Part #	Time Code:	Scene type	Action #	Action Description
	SCENE II Setting: Lord Baladewa’s palace in the kingdom of Mandura
	5	00:02	Commercial break	23.	Musical Intro:
SCENE II	5	00:30	Narration	24.	Dalang’s Narration: Baladewa sits alone in his palace waiting for the return of Karna who he sent to awaken Kresna.
	5	00:52	‘Ton Gagah	25.	“Patih Sebab” routine between dalang and actor playing Baladwa. N.B. “Benang Merah” ending to this routine.
	5	04:18	‘Ton Gagah	26.	Enter: KarnaKarna informs Baladewa that he has been unsuccessful in his efforts to wake-up Kresna.
	5	04:56	‘Ton Gagah	27.	Slapstick Gag: The actor playing Karna is enticed to sit on foam “throne” which collapse under his weight.
	5	05:20	‘Ton Gagah	28.	Role-swap routine: The actors playing Baladewa and Karna swap roles. The actor formally playing Karna feeds the actor formally playing Baladewa, Karna’s lines to be said back to the actor now playing Baladewa.
	5	06:46	‘Ton Gagah	29.	Karna explains to Baladewa that if Kresna cannot be woken and persuaded to join the Korawa, the Korawa will surely lose the Baratayuda war.
	5	06:49	‘Ton Gagah	30.	Baladewa asks Karna where Queen Banowati is. Karna asks explains that she has been “left behind” in Dwaraswati.
	5	06:56	‘Ton Gagah	31.	Prop improvisation: The actor playing Baladewa makes use of an antique iron of a coal-heated variety to improvise a scene imitating a village laundry service. Both the dalang and the actor playing Karna join in the scene. N.B. “Benang Merah” ending to this gag.
	6	00:32	‘Ton Gagah	32.	Enter: Banowati
	6	00:44	‘Ton Gagah	33.	Baladewa interrogates Banowati as to where she has been. Banowati replies that she has been “out the back.”
	6	00:52	‘Ton Gagah	34.	The dalang instructs the actress playing Banowati to use a “wayang orang” voice. This develops into a role-swap routine involving the dalang speaking Banowati’s lines in a high-pitched falsetto.
	6	01:16	‘Ton Gagah	35.	Fart Gag: The dalang standing just off-stage close behind the actress playing Banowati, farts loudly. The actress playing Banowati clamps a hand over her nose saying that “It really stinks!” and flees to the other side of the stage. The dalang points to prop statue and says “He did it.”
	6	01:34	‘Ton Gagah	36.	Innuendo routine: Banowati explains that she hasn’t been able to awaken Kresna yet but (wiggling her hips) that there are plenty other “things” she has been able to “awaken.” The other actors respond with ribald replies.
	6	01:52	‘Ton Gagah	37.	Pantun [1]competition between actors playing Banowati, Karna and Baladewa with the dalang providing assistance with rhyming lines. Routine centres on goading the actor playing Baladewa about his “flat” nose by composing couplets rhyming the Indonesian word pesek (flat) with the work kresek (plastic bag.)
	6	04:42	Narration	38.	Dalang’s Narration: Banowati informs Baladewa of her intention to wake-up Kresna and to spy on Arjuna.
	6	05:53	‘Ton Gagah	39.	Baladewa interrogates Banowati as to her plans to awaken Kresna.
	6	06:35	Narration	40.	Dalang’s Narration:  “And so Banowati volunteers herself to go spy on Arjuna…”
	6	06:48	Commercial Break	41.	Musical Outro:

---

[1] A pantun …

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 5

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Part 6

Opera Van Java – “Kresna Gugah” – Scene III

Komedi Stambul – Matthew Isaac Cohen (2006)

“Origins are often unknowable. The Komedie Stamboel was often described in reviews, notices, and advertisements as a Malay version of European opera. There is no doubt that the Komedie Stamboel drew directly on the conventions of European musical theatre. The proscenium stage, wing-and drop set, focused stage lighting, emotive character-based acting, musical orchestra accompaniment, division of plays into scenes and acts, makeup and costumes, and many of the plots of plays all resembled the theatrical technology and dramaturgy of late nineteenth-century European theatre.” (Cohen 2006: 41)

“Another influence, just as formative but less visible, was the Parsi theatre. The Parsi theatre, sometimes called wayang Parsi in Indonesia and Malaysia, is seen by some as the beginning of commercial theatre in the Malay world.” (Cohen 2006: 41)

“This book suggests that komedi stambul was one of the critical conduits for establishing Malay language and associated urban culture in the consciousness of ordinary people throughout the islands of Indonesia. Knowledge of Malay was largely restricted to the spheres of officialdom, army barracks, and urban Chinese and Eurasians in Java and other Indonesian islands until the end of the nineteenth century. The popularity of stambul and related Malay-language theatres were critical factors in Malay’s move “out into the marketplace and the media,” and help to explain why Malay was so avidly “picked up by inlanders [Natives]” lacking formal education in fin de siècle Indonesia. In Mahieu’s day, Indonesian actors performed in Malay to audiences who did not speak the same dialect of Malay as they did, and they acted on-stage together with actors from all over the archipelago and as far away as Singapore and Penang. Grammarians had been struggling to define a transregional form of Malay for decades; in stambul theater a panlocal Malay became a living reality spoken aloud in theatrical dialogues before and with mass audiences.” (Cohen 2006: 341)

“The overwrought acting style so characteristic of many so-called regional theatre (teater daerah) forms, as well as Indonesian television and film, is a reflection of stambul acting. The idea is not to internalize character but to project movements to the audience. The legacy of stambul acting lives everywhere in the stagy gestures and affected intonation automatically deployed by so many Indonesians when speaking bahasa Indonesia. Although bahasa Indonesia is officially the national language of Indonesia, it remains for most Indonesians an “un-native” language. It requires a modulation of the self, and the way the self is situated in terms of others, in order to shift oneself from the habitus associated with a mother tongue and inhabit the linguistic worldview of bahasa Indonesia. It requires speakers to dissimulate, to act. Stambul and its theatrical derivatives have provided models for how to do this.” (Cohen 2006: 342)

“Ben Anderson has persuasively argued that komedi stambul exerted critical influences on twentieth-century Indonesian political culture. The theater provided a model for “elocution and gestural repertoire” for early twentieth-century politicians. ‘The borrowing seems quite natural if we reflect that it was for the first time in stambul and bangsawan that ‘natives’ stood up onstage and addressed large numbers of people they did not know with words more or less fully prepared or memorized.’” (Cohen 2006: 342)

“Komedi stambul has been portrayed as an emblematic mestizo cultural form in which differences among Chinese, Indonesian, and European were erased and social boundaries crossed. We have observed that stambul was a multivalent cultural field that actively involved participants from all of colonial Indonesia’s major ethnic groups, including Muslims, Chinese, Europeans, Eurasians, Arabs, and others. Rather than being a melting pot for ethnicity and race, however, onstage and offstage relations in the theater served to dramatize social and ethnic difference. Contrast and conflict came into the limelight in this most public of spaces.” (Cohen 2006: 344)

“Particular patterns of social relation were instituted in the theater. In particular, komedi stambul established the Eurasian appearance as the preferred object of spectatorial pleasure for Indonesian audiences of melodrama; as such, stambul has rightly been called “a precursor of the contemporary Indonesian ‘Sinetron’ or soap operas.” The pattern of Chinese “exploitation” of non-Chinese performers also largely began with stambul. Chinese bankrolling of Indonesian artists and culture workers continues to be characteristic of nearly all forms of Indonesian entertainment involving large sums of money, including the recording industry, television, and film.” (Cohen 2006: 344)

“Stambul played a decisive role in securing, organizing, and articulating a modern worldview in nineteenth-century Java and other islands of Indonesia. It marked a break with the traditional ethos and worldview most prominently displayed in wayang kulit. Java’s traditional shadow puppet theater enacts a stratified world of gods, nobles, demons, and commoners, in which characters are inherited types rather than novel creations. Performances are contingent on ritual functions and dedicated to ancestors and tutelary spirits; the puppeteer is both entertainer and ritual officiant. Stories might be new creations based on the characters and situation of oral traditions, but resolutions are fixed: there is always a return to the status quo.  The Javanese language employed is often purposefully archaic and obscure, demanding linguistic expertise from both performers and audience.” (Cohen 2006: 345)

“Stambul stages a modern model for representation, both in theater and in real life. As commercial entertainment performed in readily accessible Malay language in public theatres, depicting characters mechanically reproduced or re-presented from social life, it was not contingent on expert spectators, local religious practices, or places spirits. The theater was a platform for mimesis and translation, in which “a huge variety of stories were imitated or enacted.” Plays were typically narrative transformations of literary and journalistic sources, but companies were free to take substantial liberties with dramatic sources as these were not fixed by the legacy of a performing tradition. It was, in other words, a site for play. It was a place for the exploration of possibilities, including ones overtly forbidden by the colonial regime.” (Cohen 2006: 345)

Source: Cohen, M.I. The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891-1903. Leiden: KILTV Press, 2006

Dalan Gecul: Clowning in Opera Van Java

The clowning on display in Opera Van Java traces its lineage back to the similar clowning found in Javanese folk theatre traditions such as ketoprak and ludruk, and before this to the dalan gecul of the wayang kulit performance – the comedic interludes performed by the traditional Javanese clowns, the punakawan, in between acts. In each of these three theatrical forms, the dalan gecul  functions dramatically as a carnivalesque interlude that briefly reverses status roles and subverts the dominant values prevailing with a play, particularly those of the satria, the warriors – both heroic and demonic – whose words and deeds otherwise populate a play’s narrative. Describing the dalan gecul within the  ketoprak tradition Babara Hatley recounts that:

“Very frequently the clowns stage some kind of show, such as a competition, an excerpt from another dramatic genre or role-play. […]The dramatic excerpt presented is often a fragment of wayang wong dance drama. […] Favourite scenes are the formal court audience and the battle between the refined knight and his demon opponent. […] In each case the farcical humour derives from the incongruity of the casting. Bumbling clowns in their humble village attire act out the parts of king and courtier; in the battle fragment a hugely fat female clown may dance the part of the delicate and refined satria, Arjuna, while a skinny, woebegone actor plays the crude and volatile fanged monster, Cakil. The characteristics of performers clash bizarrely with the codes of physical appearance, gesture, movement and speech by which these dramatic figures are usually portrayed.” (Hately 2008: 55)

This parodic, carnivalesque function of the dalan gecul is noted also in James Peacock’s study of ludruk in the 1960s.  Describing the figure of the clown as it manifests in ludruk. “He [the clown] […] mocks his master’s external signs – sounds and motions. The clown’s favorite game is to imitate gestures and words of somebody other than himself – a creditor when he is actually a debtor, a master when his is a servant, a girl, when he is a man, a policeman when he is a thief.” (Peacock 1968: 73) In ludruk as in wayang kulit and ketoprak, the figure of the clown is afforded a level of frankness and honesty in speech and gesture not enjoyed by heroines and villains. The greater emotional spontaneity and communicative freedom permitted the punakawan derives from their utter dependency on their masters and complete lack of personal social status. Clowns lack all potency save for their capacity to speak truths others dare not.

In many respects an episode of Opera Van Java takes the form of  dalan gecul, a comic excerpt of the sort described above without the dramatic structure would bracket similar comic interludes in earlier theatrical traditions such as ketoprak and wayang kulit. Clearly many of the comic devices employed in OVJ are derived  from the techniques deployed in the dalan gecul of earlier dramatic traditions such ketoprak and ludruk. The “incongruous casting” of an actor against type for comic effect, for instance, is a recurring source of humour in OVJ. In the following exchange dalang Parto Patrio interrupts the opening scene in the story of Kresna Gugah to confront comedienne Nunung, playing the part of the warrior Setyaki, on her choice of footwear for the role. 

Then, in a further assault on theatrical convention, the performers exchange roles.” (Hately 2008: 55)

“Competitions usually centre on language, tests of skill in language forms considered by village and kampung Javanese as prestigious but difficult to reproduce. These include high Javanese, the national language taught in schools, Indonesian, and the language of modernity and global outreach, English. One tricks the other by asking for high Javanese equivalents of low-level words for which no high form exists. The latter applies standard rules to concoct preposterous inventions. Javanese/Indonesian homonyms confuse both clowns hopelessly; English words are mispronounced in such a way as to resemble Javanese expressions and interpreted accordingly. The clowns’ foolish bungling evokes laughter. Yet there is also playful suggestion of the richness and breadth of ngoko Javanese, the familiar and comfortable everyday tongue of performers and the audience. High Javanese is revealed by comparison as limited in scope, stiff and artificial, while the newfangled languages of Indonesian and English have seemingly adopted much of their vocabulary from Javanese.” (Hately 2008: 55)

The wordplay and verbal sparring on display in OVJ differs in some important respects to that described in Hatley’s discussion of ketoprak. As Hately observes, the mother tongue of ketoprak’s clowning – it’s linguistic centre of gravity, if you will –  is Javanese, particularly ngoko low-Javanese. In the context of ketoprak, Indonesian is employed to a large extent for the comic potential of its juxtaposition as an alien and “newfangled” language alongside the intimacy and familiarity of ngoko Javanese. The same cannot be said for Indonesian with the context of OVJ’s clowning. Performed by a multi-ethnic cast of comedians to a national television audience of a similarly diverse ethnic composition, OVJ does not share ketoprak‘s linguistic centre of gravity. Though regional languages – particularly Javanese – are employed frequently on the show, the natural language of OVJ is Indonesian.

While Indonesian lacks the formal speech levels of Javanese, the muddling and switching of which is the comic lifeblood of ketoprak, Indonesian does have its own registers of formality and intimacy which can be manipulated to great comedic effect. Goenwan Mohamad has analysed with considerably nuance the relationship between patterns of Javanese-language theatrical wordplay and their Indonesian analogues in his discussion of the long-running ketoprak  troupe, Srimulat. The troupe, founded in Yogyakarta in the 1960s enjoyed growing success throughout the 1970s and 80s with a regular show on national television that continued in varying shapes and forms through to the late 1990s. Srimulat’s performances were performed for multi-ethnic audiences predominantly in Indonesian but with a significant percentage of its dialogue and humour in an untranslated Javanese. Even where dialogue was spoken explicity in Indonesian, Mohamad asserts, Javanese patterns of wordplay exerted a considerable infulence over both performers’ comic improvisation and audiences’ reception of these comedic routines.

Mohamed describes a Srimulat rendering of a conventional master-servant routine. Though the dialogue  is delivered entirely in Indonesian, Mohamed  argues that much of the comic tension in the scene relies on and assumes an audiences’ knowledge and understanding of Javanese wordplay in countless of similar master-servant routines in other Javanese theatrical traditions such as ketoprak, ludruk  and wayang kulit. As a case in point he highlights the  routine’s punchline which involves a master’s threat to “asphalt”  his servant’s forehead. The line ends with the Indonesian word “jidakmu” or “your forehead”. While not explicitly offensive in Indonesian,  Mohamed explains that few Javanese viewers would be able to hear the line without calling to mind the Javanese expletive “Ndhasmu”. Similarly Mohamad describes a routine centred around an actor’s use, within an domestic family scene, of the Indonesian word “namun” (“but” or “however”). The comic tension of the routine relies on what Mohamed calls the “double otherness” of the word “namun” and its employment in a scene of domesticity. “Namun” is doubly “othered”, in the first instance by its remove from Javanese – the language of hearth and home for both the actor speaking the line and much of the audience hearing it – and in the second instance by its remove from colloquial Indonesian. “Namun”, he explains, belongs”to the semantic field of the literati” or perhaps to what Anderson has identified as the “kramanized” newspeak of New Order-era Indonesian public discourse.

Mohamad has described Srimulat’s performances as a “feast of orality” most potently manifest in troupe’s avoidance of scripted performance and completed reliance on comic improvisation. The transgressive pleasure of Srimulat, contends Mohamend, lay in the troupe’s “confusion between orality and literacy, between the “local” and the “universal”, and between the “vulgar” amd the “offical.” (Mohamed 2006: 79)   Audiences were drawn to Srimulat by the spectacle of Javanese actors humoursouly, wrly, intentionally mangling the state-mandated national language. While not overtly politcal, Mohamad desrcibes the subversive pleasure derived by audiences of Srimulat in hearing the national language so mangled and reduced to comic tems within a Javanese cultural and linguistic system.

The complex cultural sensibilities around language in Indonesia that provided such fertile comic ground for Srimulat in the 1980s and 90s have not changed significantly since then. The longstanding sociocultural contestation between speakers of the national language, Indonesian, and speakes of regional languges such as Javanese continues. So to does the struggle for primacy between regional variations of the national language itself. The sociocultural fissures exploited by ludruk performers in Peacock’s study between “kuno” and “maju“, and those highlighted in Mohamed’s discussion of ketoprak between  orality and literacy, the “local” and the “universal”, and the “vulgar” are still today potent sources of sociocultural tension and therefore comedy. Though speaking to post-New Order audiences, OVJ continues to mine these tensions for comic purposes with multiple strains of the national langauge displayed and often pitted against each another, alongside regional languages such as Javanese, and high-prestige foreign languages such as English.

Dialogue Analysis 1: Indonesian, Javanese and English in Opera Van Java’s “Dilema Cinta Gatotkaca”

(FN) Ben Anderson has discussed at length what he calls the “Javanization of Indonesian” – a general rubrik under which he groups a number subphenomena inclduing the “kramannization of public Indonesian” and the adoption of the Jakartan dialect of Indonesian as the “new ngoko” (Anderson 1990: 145-146).Under this process Indonesian, which Anderson argues was born or a modern, revolutionary, democratic and egalitarian cultural impulse, has gradually been forced to yield to counterevolutionary traditionalism and the imposition of what he calls “Javanese modalities”. Indonesian, which was adopted by the Indonesia’s founding father in part due to its egalitarian lingusitic structure, has, Anderson argues, in more recent times begun to exhibt a similar hierarchy of speech levels and registers to that found in Javanese.  (FN? )

(FN) Mohamed speaks also of a second, more general, (though no more significant) subversive pleasure in seeing language reduced to banality and meaningless, in witnessing language fail at its tasks of representaion and so hinting at “a semantic void” Mohamed invokes Lacanian notion of jouissance to describe the pleasure we feel at witnessing the rupture of the symbolic order and the brief respite from the “prison house of language” that such a breakdown afforsds. Mohamed applies Julia Kristeva’s model of “the carnival” to a dialogic situation in which “language…parodies iteslf, repudiating its role in representation” which provokes laughter “but remains incapabcle of detaching iteslf form representation”. The laughter elicited by such a performance therefore, suggests Mohamed, is “not simply parodic” but simultaneously comic and tragic. (Kristeva cited in Mohamed 2006: 86)

(FN) Founded by Teguh, an adopted son of a father of Chinese desecent and a Javanese-born mother, the troupe took its name from Teguh’s wife, a famous singer and theatre peformer of the 1930s and 40s. Teguh’s primary theatrical tradition, according to Mohamad, was a reversal of the convential hierarchy that underpinned the “batur-and-bendoro” or master-and-servant comic routines of  the dalan gecul found in ealier theatrical traditions. In Srimulat, argues Mohamad, the character of the servant, of the maid, of the average individual is placed front-and-centre in the narrative and invested with a greater sense nobility and dignity than they are in previous theatrical forms such as wayang kulit and ketoprak. (Mohamed 2006: 71-72)

Dialogue Analysis: 1: “Patih Sebab” dialogue in Opera Van Java: Kresna Gugah episode

	Dalang (Parto):  (Narrasi) Di istananya Prabu Baladewa sedang menantikan Adipati Karna yang diutus  untuk membangunkan…yaitu Kresna. Langsung saja kita lihat di TKP[1].	Dalang (Parto): Meanwhile in his palace, Prabu Baladewa awaits the return of Adipati Karna who was sent to awaken Kresna. We straight to the scene to see what happens.
Camera cuts from the dalang’s stage to the performance stage. Sule playing the role of Prabu Baladewa sits disconsolate on the floor of his place thrown room, in front of his thrown.
	1. Baladewa (Sule): Aduh. Ini Si Adipati “Sebab” ke mana lagi ya dia?	1. Baladewa (Sule): My word. Where has that Adipati “Sebab” gotten to?
	2. Dalang: Siapa ‘le?	2. Dalang: (rapping impatiently  on puppet box) Who, le?
	3. Pa…Patih “Sebab”.	3. Pa…Patih “Sebab”.
	4. Dalang: Kamu dengar narasi saya, nggak tadi barusan?	4. Dalang: (impatiently) Did you hear my narration just before or not?
	5. Sule:  Saya nungguin siapa di sini?	5. Baladewa/Sule: (no longer in character): Who is it I’m waiting for?
	6. Dalang: Tadi saya narasi…Prabu Baladewa sedang menantikan Adipati Karna. Itu sudah ketahuan, kan?	6. Dalang: (with increasing irritation) Just now in my narration I explained that Prabu Baladewa was waiting for the arrival of Adipati “Karna”. Got it? Are we clear?
	7. Sule: Sekarang saya tanya, kata lain dari “sebab” apa?	7. Sule: (somewhat defiantly) Wait just a second…what’s another word for “sebab” (because)?
	8. Dalang: Karena.	8. Dalang: (confused) “Karena” (alternate Indonesian word for “because”).
	9. Sule: Ya, udeh. Apa urusannya? Terserah saya, dong.	9. Sule: Well, there you go. What’s your problem? I can say it however I want.
The audience cheers and applauds the wordplay involved in Sule’s deliberate confusion of the character name “Karna” with the Indonesian word “karena” meaning “because”. They appreciate also the additional leap of imagination involved in Sule’s substitution of the word “karena” with its close Indonesian synonym “sebab” by way of which Sule derives the comically erroneous character name, Adipati “Sebab”.
	10. Dalang: Eh…Ini bukan masalah “udeh”, ‘le.	10. Dalang: (looking put out) What do you mean “there I go”…
	11. Sule: Sekarang kalau misalkan kosa kata…	11. Sule: (adopting the manner of a school teacher) Now, in terms of vocabulary…
	12. Dalang: Uh…	12. Dalang: (going along with Sule for now) Uh…
	13. Sule: …”oleh sebab itu”…nah, kan…itu bisa digantikan “oleh karena itu”.	13. Sule: (growing in confidence) Now, take the the phrase “oleh sebab itu” (consequently, because of),  this can be replaced by the phrase “oleh karena itu” (as a result of, due to).
	Audience laughs
	12. Sule: Sekarang, “Adipati Karna” diganti dengan “Adipati Sebab”…sama!	12. Sule: Now,  if you take the name “Adipati Karna” and replace it “Adipati Sebab”…it means the same thing!
	Audience applauds. Dalang looks taken aback and directs a hard glare towards Sule.
	13. Dalang: Lain, lain…	13. Dalang: (angrily) No! No! It’s not the same at all…
	14. Sule: Kok lain…	14. Sule: What do you mean its not the same…
	15. Dalang: Di wayang-wayang nggak ada itu namanya “Adipati Sebab”. Nggak ada! Karna! Yang ada Karna!	15. Dalang: (still fuming) There’s no character called “Adipati Sebab” in wayang. Karna! There’s only Karna!
	16. Sule: Ini cerita wayang?	16. Sule: Is this a wayang story?
	17. Dalang: Wayang!	17. Dalang: (exasperated) Wayang!
	18. Sule: Saya kirain judul Roma Irama tadi.	18. Sule: Oh…I thought we were discussing a Roma Irama song.
	Audience applauds. Dalang slumps back against his puppet box, defeated.

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[1] TKP = Tempat Kejadian Perkara roughly translates to ‘scene’ or in non-theatrical contexts ‘scene of the crime’.

Source: Hatley, B. Javanese Performances on an Indonesian Stage: Contesting Culture, Embracing Change. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008